


Contrary to popular believe, Steve is not a depressed recluse...

by Kare



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:45:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kare/pseuds/Kare
Summary: ... he had just rotten luck with picking his hobbies.





	Contrary to popular believe, Steve is not a depressed recluse...

Contrary to popular believe, Steve is not a depressed recluse, he had just rotten luck with picking his hobbies.

 

Because as it turns out missions can help to get you into touch with the 21st century. And while he would give every organ in his body to keep Bucky alive while they are on the run, he isn’t sure which of the numerous hobbies he misses the most.

 

~~~

 

One of his first missions had let him to the middle of Europe.

 

Steve would be hard pressed to find the little town again on a map. He would be hard press to place it with any kind of certainty, even if he walked right through it. But in one of the side streets had been a … bonbon manufacturer? Or what ever else this fancy new age called places like that.

 

But Steve had recognized it. The nose clocking sweetness, the warmth, the little imperfections that appeared on hand made sweets, Christmas trees on lolly sticks, green leaves tasting of woodruff, small morsels tasting like cherry, strawberry bonbons shaped like stars… he had had the real urge to buy the entire shop back then.

 

It had been… home.

 

It had been a memory from when things weren’t so artificially sweet they would root your teeth and shock your brain. Those were sweets, real sweets.

 

And a part of him had wanted to turn around and ask Bucky just what of those he would like to get.

 

It had been a short moment.

 

Partly because back then there had been no Bucky and the memory had just served to make Steves stomach clench painfully.

 

And partly because it was his job to bust a drug ring and as it turned out you can hide drugs in drops that are officially filled with sherbet.

 

A part of his mind whispered how he should have known this was too good to be true.

 

He still wasn’t sure just how Nat had gotten wind of this. Well… to be fair, that was probably the part that was easier to figure. But one day - about two months after they had started working together, she had found him a similar shop in Brooklyn, had dropped him in front of the store and told him she would pick him up in six hours and he better had something to show for himself…

 

As it turned out this brilliant new age did offer classes for everything. Even private candy making classes with a guy who looked old enough to be Steves grandpa - even if he was probably younger then Steve - and who could not help himself spreading the same annoying but infectious cheerfulness as Santa Clause.

 

So they had spend the day crafting sweet little mint pillows.

 

The other one had even shown Steve how to cut them in the absence of a machine.

 

And maybe, just maybe, Steve took it as a late night hobby. When the nightmares would not let him sleep and he knew that he had a few hours till he was needed anywhere… then heating sugar, adding flavor, shape, if he was fast even a little pattern… pulling and forming and cutting the mass… it was all kind of soothing. In a way hardly anything was back then.

 

The problem with too many nightmares?

 

They resulted in too many sweets.

 

As a kid Steve would have never thought that even to be possible, but it was true. He soon had more sweets then he could eat himself, he felt foolish handing them out at work and there were only so many anonymous donations one could make to a hospital before someone took an interest in him.

 

It was more of a accident for the others to find out about this. Or maybe not. After all there had been Nat in the picture. But the others had taken on a decent liking to his sweets. There was that one strawberry rhubarb mixture that Tony had practically devoured all on his own…

 

Yeah, but things like that not only required access to a kitchen, pots, sugar and a few other things… it also required takers. And as long as Steve was doing his best to keep Bucky safe, mostly by switching between cheap motel rooms, this was out of question.

 

~~~

 

The other thing had been a bit of a accident.

 

Camouflage was still a thing. Even if Steve had not understood why he needed a tattoo - of something as cliched as a eagle, no less - or why parts of his clothes glowed in the dark or why one of the interns ever so tentatively suggested something called a piercing.

 

To be fair, Steve had been through enough pain and medical procedures to last him a lifetime, so he might be forgiven for not jumping with joy at hearing that word.

 

It didn’t exactly promise cuddles and teddy bears after all.

 

Nat had sighted the sigh of the long suffering and Steve had inwardly braved for another lecture on the things that were the 21st century.

 

But in the end she had just shown him a picture of a highly pierced face.

 

There had been so much metal that not even Steve could mistake it for something gender exclusive.

 

“Do I have to get all of them?”

 

Because that prospect had been a bit too much, no matter how often people told him to be open about experiences.

 

Nat had been game back then. “Pick one… or two.”

 

So Steve had taken a stud to his left nostril and a ring at one of the top corners of his left ear.

 

Nat had taken him to a tattoo parlor to fix him up and Steve's mixture of stubbornness and actual muscles meant that he refused to be intimidated by the environment or the lewd grin the piercer gave him.

 

And yes, Steve had made the mistake to ask Nat about it. It might have turned out important for a mission, after all.

 

And Nat, bless her soul, had just informed him that a ear ring for a guy used to mean that said guy is sexually interested in other guys. And while it usually was just jewelers these days, maybe the other one had hoped to score a date. After all Steve had moaned kinda nicely…

 

Needless to say that Steve had turned beet red at that one.

 

It had taken him a total of four minutes to just shrug it off. Not much he could do to change things now, anyway.

 

It had probably been Nat's matter of fact tone and Steve's ability to not judge that made this the first step into their friendship.

 

As it turned out, Steve hated to stud in his nose. His hands kept going there and is felt strange for breathing and he was afraid he would just inhale that small thing.

 

He could not wait to get that one out.

 

But the one in his ear? That one was kinda nice. Steve was mature enough to know that a ring posed too many ways it could be ripped out in a battle, so he put a stud in there and actually liked what he saw in the mirror.

 

It was subtle and only just distracted from his face. He liked the dark blue color. And for reasons he was not yet entirely ready to face, he liked it. He liked that it was only just visible from most angles and that it made him less concerned about peoples stares.

 

As it turned out the small hole closed over quickly if Steve took out the little piece of jewelry. A day or two at the most were enough.

 

And since getting the hole redone did cost money, he only was willing to spend that much money when he knew there was a peaceful time ahead.

 

Yeah, he had not had those in a while. So his piercing collection remained at some undisclosed safe house, awaiting better times.

 

~~~

 

To be fair, his piercings were probably right next to his guitar.

 

It had been another mission and an intern had sat him down and explained tabs and that he just needed to memorize how to put his hands where and he was good to go.

 

It was supposed to be like a cheat sheet and while he very much appreciated the help, he knew that this was not how guitars usually worked.

 

Another thing the 21st century had not yet disclosed to him was how easy it was to get teach-yourself-guide-books. He had gotten himself one of those.

 

And he had had a guitar with him practically for the first three years straight.

 

There was something in the way those stings…

 

Half of the time Steve still lacked the words to speak the current version of English. But the music spoke to him. If Steve was sad he didn’t need to play chipper and if he had one of his rare good moods, he could improvise something that at least to him sounded like the Comedian Harmonists…

 

He probably would not have started if he had known for sure that his apartment had been bugged.

 

He probably would have not picked it up again if he had not trusted Tony back then.

 

But then again, he would not have had this at his disposal to bond with Wanda. Back then, when her brother had died and the air was still tense between everyone, they would often find themselves wandering the same halls late at night.

 

It had been more of a hunch to hand his guitar to Wanda.

 

But he had not been overly surprised to learn that she knew how to play.

 

It had taken him two days to get her an instrument of her own.

 

And not always, but some nights, they would just sit in the commons area, not swapping words, but melodies.

 

Wanda was possibly the only one who had ever listened to his pre-war-repertoire - apart from Bucky, way back then, but Bucky had been the exception of pretty much everything - and in return she had tried to get him up to speed on some of the classics.

 

Steve missed those nights.

 

But more then that he missed staying somewhere where he could be sure his instrument would not be smashed to pieces by some assassins send his way, a stray bullet or one of the many scraps that happen when one is on the run.

 

~~~

 

One of the few things Steve had gotten off the list before he rejoined active duty had been a pilgrimage.

 

Santiago De Compostella, to be precise.

 

He had needed to get out of America for a while. And to spend an entire day walking with a backpack had been rather familiar.

 

It was not the same without someone - Bucky - watching his six, but it was close enough.

 

No one had minded him back then, it was almost as if people expected you to not really fit in when you did something like that. He could have long and almost honest conversations with the people there. He never gave his real name. And he was very careful not to mention the war, but as long as he kept things general he could tell the whole world about his old fashioned stance on a lot of things and they would smile like he was a particularly cute snowflake and just move on with the conversation.

 

It had been eye opening, to say the least.

 

And if he had used the time to work through some of the things that had been weighting on his mind back then… well, that is partly what such a pilgrimage is for, right?

 

He would have loved to do it again, he missed the way you would gravitate towards people and build your own kind of pack.

 

He missed trusting strangers…

 

Most of all he missed the times when he was still able to get out and walk around unrecognized.

 

As much fun as it had been, he was unlikely to ever relive that experience…

 

~~~

 

But that journey had been good for another thing.

 

He had met a girl, a rather cute and maybe slightly crazy one - and he would never be so impolite to disclose that it had been the one kiss he remembered when Nat asked him about practice during one particular drive to an abandoned military base - who had split her days between walking and working.

 

She had been the first person Steve had ever known who was really rather joined to her tech. She would write, chat, talk to him, do some pics - and he had always asked to stay out of them -, ask him about the best way to phrase something, do a bit of translating, photo shop some pictures and then get up and walk some more.

 

And Steve had been more then just a little impressed that she was able to juggle her work load and walking about as much as everyone else. He understood that it must have been cutting into her sleep cycle, but it had impressed him none the less.

 

He had not spoken her version of English.

 

Then again, very few people seemed to have.

 

What he did get, regardless, was that the Internet seemed to be a marvelous place.

 

He had used Wikipedia.

 

She introduced him to fanfics and Tumblr, to Facebook, chat groups, to WhatsApp and all the other things his superiors had only touched on in passing.

 

She had been the one to introduce him to his own tribe on the net.

 

And he was very glad he had only kissed her, because everything else would have made things awkward in the long run. There he had secured small translation gigs, book recs, hyper links, cat memes, all the things the 21st century had on offer. And he had learned more about current morals from the things these people raved about then from all the books he had been made to read.

 

He liked them.

 

Partly because to them he was 'Stefano', that one American dude with the exotic work schedule, that would be gone for weeks only to come back 24/7 some time later.

 

He missed them.

 

He missed the stupid pet updates, the family drama that did not concern him but felt a lot more real then his own private life, the picture of exotic foods or the knowledge that it had been the later pics that had gotten him out of the house, hunting for something to eat, even if he himself had mainly just wanted to curl up in a ball and not interact with anyone much.

 

He had needed them then.

 

And he would have appreciated them now. But it was better to be untraceable. So using the Internet for anything but the most mundane task was out of the question.

 

Sometimes life was just unfair like that.

 

Even if these people were one of the few who knew that Steve had met an “old class mate” that used to mean the world to him… and they had been so happy for him, bombarding him with all kinds of questions he had been only to willing to answer…

 

Well, some things could not be changed.

 

Because what ever happened, Bucky would always come first, in what ever kind of capacity the other one would allow him around. Bucky had been the only one who ever truly mattered. And Steve had every intention to keep it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> There was the idea of writing a second part where Steve and Bucky move into Stark Tower during Christmas and Steve tries to pick up his hobbies again... with Bucky slowly trying to understand what is going on and Nat being sassy about it...  
> ... well, that idea was last Nano and we currently have close to 30°C outside... this one ain't going to materialize anytime soon. Anyone feels like it: feel free to have a go ^^


End file.
